


Ups and Downs and Ups

by RanjantheVictor



Category: IT (2017), IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst and Fluff, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier-centric, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Loss of Limbs, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Physical Disability, myra kaspbrak - Freeform, old man sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 19:45:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19069420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RanjantheVictor/pseuds/RanjantheVictor
Summary: One week after defeating IT for good Eddie Kaspbrak finds himself struggling to the ups and downs of his new life.Down one arm, up a best friend and maybe something more (totally something more).





	1. Down and Up

Eddie awoke, dark, disorientated and gagging for a piss. 

He creaked his sleep-gummed eyelids open just far enough to see the red 3:57 glowing insistently on the bedside table. With a soft groan, soft lest he wake Myra and be forced to endure the inevitable _But what’s wrong Eddie-bear? It’s much too late for you to be awake, you need your sleep you know!_ , he hauled back the covers and dragged his unwilling body from the bed.

As he padded his way down the corridor, he couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that something wasn’t right. The carpet felt wrong on the soles of his feet, the corridor was too long and the clamminess of his hands meant that the temperature was much too high for the middle of the night. But between his slumber-addled brain and his bursting bladder these nagging inconsistencies passed him by, his sluggish thoughts focused only on his determined mission.

When he reached the bathroom he didn’t even bother turning the light on before doing his business with a sigh of relief. Once the stream had ended, he turned on the sink, splashed his hand into the stream of cooling water and used it to try and scrub some of the gunk from his eyes. Able to see better, and no longer so distracted by his pee-quest, those niggling doubts pushed their way to the front of his mind. Even in the dim light that trickled through the window (but not dim enough for four o’clock in the morning) he could see that the bathroom didn’t look right. It was…off. The positioning of the toilet and the shower was wrong.

Eddie walked back into the corridor, and more wrongness and offness confronted him. The walls were too pale, and covered with what looked like movie and video game posters, with none of Myra’s florals and pictures of baby chickens to be seen. 

This didn’t make sense. His breathing quickened and his brow prickled. True, he was still half-asleep but that didn’t explain why someone had apparently snuck in during the night and completely redecorated his flat. He’d woken up drunk and disorientated plenty of times before of course, increasingly frequently in the seven years since he’d gotten married, but, unfortunately, he’d never done so somewhere other than his and Myra’s place, so he _must_ be there. Where else would he be? 

So why was everything so OFF?

Panic trickled sweat down his back and wrapped its fingers around his windpipe.

He hurried down the stretched-out corridor, determined to get to a window or his phone or something that would tell him what was going on, but the increased pace sent his balance whirling from side-to-side, which made even less sense and emboldened panic’s grip even further. Even when hammered out of his skull, Eddie had excellent balance. Alcohol carried him through fiery, cuddly and sleepy stages with remarkable rapidity, but never once did he allow it to approach his inner ear. He was tired and scared, but his mouth tasted clean (Eddie never cleaned his teeth after drinking despite the horrible funk it left in his gums the following morning, but the drink somehow encouraged him enough to go to sleep till tasting the whiskey on his breath as a fuck-you to the wife he was obliged to kiss in the morning, and to the imposing, angry dentist he half-remembered from his childhood) so his brain fought past the drowsy fear enough to conclude that he couldn’t be drunk, he couldn’t be anywhere other than his flat, so why, why was everything so wrong and yet not unfamiliar?

Why was the corridor lurching back and forth, the carpet undulating up-and-down and his inner ear bubbling and broiling so? His feet stumbled forward, barely able to support his tilting torso, but still the panic pushed him forwards. But when he came to a step that absolutely should not be there, his feet abandoned him and he tumbled forward and down. With a cry he thrust his right arm out to try and catch himself on the wall….and nothing. 

In the split second before Eddie hit the floor with a painful thump, he didn’t see his fingers splay against the wall, nor his hand brace itself or any trace of his arm making any effort to save him whatsoever. He saw only the sleeve of his t-shirt make a single jerk in the right direction, the fabric swaying feebly despite the desperate effort.

Eddie’s knees took the impact first, followed shortly by his nose and forehead. Panic left the room, but left his friends, pain and humiliation. Blood seeped from his left knee and his forehead throbbed, and his brain pointed and laughed at himself lying helplessly on the floor. Of course. He’d forgotten. He’d fucking forgotten, but now it came cruelly back to him, it took his missing arm and slapped him around the face with it.  
His balance still heaving and the pain screeching at him, Eddie heaved himself into a sitting position with his left arm, his right nothing but an empty, useless sleeve still flapping pointlessly with every move he made. He pulled his bloody knees to his chest and hugged them one-handed. The pain brought tears to his eyes, and the shame brought more.

With pain, humiliation and confusion playing catch with his brain, Eddie only had sufficient control of his mind to turn it to the important task of berating himself for his foolishness and weakness. Not only was he such a cripple that he couldn’t even walk down the fucking hall of his own goddamn home, he was such a foolish cripple he didn’t even recognise where he lived or even remember that he’d lost a whole fucking arm just last fucking week. He mashed his one remaining fist against the side of his leg, thoughtlessly thinking that it might do something to dull the hurt. It didn’t.

And the reason Eddie knew he was such a laughable weakling was the same reason he could hear the sound of large feet slapping their way towards him. Any moment now his wife would appear behind him, hands flapping, cheeks red and panting blubberingly. As soon as she caught sight of him there on the floor, those hands would be clasped to those cheeks, and those blubs would turn into the shriek of a whistling teapot and the breathy, gasping ministrations would begin. _How silly_ he was to be walking by himself, _to even think of going to the bathroom without her being there to look after him_. After all, when he was already _so delicate_ even without his new _weakness_ , to _dare_ to do something so foolish, _he might have died_ and then where would she be? All alone and he didn’t want that, _did he?_ There would be a slight pause then, a sudden abrupt interlude of silence, before a shrill gasp and a repeated _Do you?_ , which would require a _Of course not dear_ in return. 

That would be a met with a loud huff, one that sounded almost pleased despite its pleading tone, before the endless chain of exhortations, gasps of shock and frantic exhaled suggestions of more extensive treatments would continue. All the while loud, wet sobs would tumble down her cheeks, and her tiny hands would be dancing around once more, applying a variety of sickly-smelling essential oils to his shoulder, each apparently entirely necessary, and the only thing that could possibly keep him from growing even weaker. Because that’s what he was, that MUST be what he was because it was all he ever fucking heard – weak, and silly, and in need of care, and foolish, and crippled, and so helpless without her, so dependent, so –

A long-fingered hand wrapped itself around his shoulder and squeezed gently.

“Shit Eds, you alright?”

Eddie looks up to see Richie’s face peering concernedly down at him, his eyes huge and soft behind his chunky bedroom glasses (Richie confessed yesterday that he leaves a pair of glasses in every room of his house for whenever he forgets his contacts. The bedroom pair have a label on them indicating that they are for ‘Night-time emergencies and morning sex only’). Those giant, dark orbs cause pain, humiliation and imaginary Myra to immediately drop Eddie’s brain, jam it back in his skull and scuttle off into the darkness. Drowsiness slides away and everything comes rushing back.

He’s at Richie’s house in LA, and has been for the last three days. It’s been a week since they defeated IT and Eddie lost his arm, and a fortnight since he last saw his wife (though there have been several high-pitched phone calls). The fight is over, admittedly he’s still missing a whole damn arm, but he’s not alone and Myra is nowhere to be seen outside his own paranoia.

Because that’s the thing. What Eddie can see reflected back at him is something he hasn’t seen in the past two decades, but he’s pretty sure it’s what actual concern actually looks like. A blend of sincerity and affection, rather than the more familiar mixture of hysteria and glee. The words out of his mouth are light, not shrill, more of a gentle probe than a frenzied battering ram.

“So what happened Spaghetti? You get into another fight with a garden gnome or something?” he inquires, as casually as if he was asking about the weather, laced with just a dash (a tablespoon) of teasing.

“Fuck off. I fell” Eddie shoots back.

“Falling for me already Eds?” Richie responds with just a smidge (a ladle) more teasing to his tone this time.

“You literally weren’t even here. What the hell do you think I fell for? This fucking hideous carpet?”

“Purple’s a lovely colour I’ll have you know!” Richie grins, and by some quantum reaction this causes Eddie’s mouth to turn upwards as well.

“Anyway the doctors told me the loss of the arm would fuck with my balance. So the clowns to blame almost as much as your taste in interior decorating”

“It was like this when I bought the house!” Richie protests

“I think you’re allowed to change the carpet after five years you know”

“Whatever,” Richie scoffs. “So I can see the booboo on your knee,” he continues with just a pinch (a fucking saucepan) of teasing in his voice, “but how’s Old Stumpy doing there?”

“You getting forgetful in your old age or something Trashmouth?”

“I’m one month older than you!”

“Yeah and this stump is one week old. He’s called Stumpy Junior”

Richie full-on belly laughs at this, which causes more quantum giggles to spill out of Eddie’s mouth. He admits to an outsider this might look kind of odd – two forty-year old men awake at four o’ clock on the morning exchanging playground insults and gesticulating wildly at one another with their three arms. But to Eddie it was everything. 

Because when Eddie stuck out his hand, and Richie hauled him up on his feet and led him back to the bathroom, Richie had actually waited until Eddie offered his hand and requested (some might say ordered) a lift up. And when Richie had grabbed band-aids and antiseptic out of his remarkably well-stocked medicine cabinet, he offered them straight to Eddie to apply himself (though he did insist on planting ‘a big smackeroo’ on Eddie’s knee once he was finished). It might be weird that Eddie felt more independent than he had done in years, clumsily smearing Neosporin onto his leg while trading juvenile jokes with Richie, but this lifted his heart more than any of his wife’s or mother’s ‘caring’ mollycoddles had ever done.

Eddie still didn’t entirely know why he agreed to come back with Richie to L.A rather than return to New York, nor how long he was going to stay, or who he even was to Richie right now (friend? roommate? patient?), or how he was going to contribute to all the bills Richie had payed for him when his job was on the other side of the country and his wallet was still lying in a sewer in Maine, but right now, he wasn’t sure he cared. Right now, as he made faux-protests while Richie carefully wrote ‘Stumpy Jr.’ in pink sharpie on his dressing, he couldn’t help but think that for the first time in longer than he cared to remember, things might actually be looking up.


	2. Sideways and Up

Scratch that. Things were not looking up at all. They were in fact looking decidedly annoying, and confusing, and aggravating, and feeble and irritating in equal measure. In short, having a radically-shortened arm _fucking sucked_.

Eddie had never been exactly a paragon of musculature, not least because gyms were disgusting places, damp with sweat, testosterone and protein shakes, but he’d always had at least some strength in his diminutive form, a lot of which was concentrated in his arms (unlike Richie of course, whose arms appeared to be made out of vermicelli). Driving a taxi in New York actually made it almost as necessary as a licence, as Eddie needed something packing to help persuade problem customers not to stiff the soft-faced little cabbie, and years of helping wrestle the late-night partiers’ tired drunk asses out of the back of his car and through their front doors had given him a fair bit of muscle. He’d even managed to emerge mostly unscathed from that attempted mugging late last year, his only wounds some deep fingernail gouges from Myra clutching his arm as tightly as if she were trying to throttle a boa constrictor, and an ear-ache from the hypersonic shrieks she had apparently decided to demonstrate.

Now however, now that he was armless and harmless, he was pretty sure he’d lose a fight with a drunk chinchilla. 

And every time he looked at the blank, empty space that now accompanied him wherever he went he was not only reminded of his new weakness, but also just how goddamn hard his no-arm made everything. No matter what the task was, regardless of what job he had assigned himself, they were all just that much more slow and complicated and really fucking annoying.

Ever since his first week staying (living? sharing? temporarily guesting at?) Richie’s place, he’d set himself the task of acting as housekeeper whenever Richie was at work. Partially this was because the doctors had advised him to keep active, partly because he wasn’t sure how he’d survive being in the house for any extended period of time without cleaning at least a little bit (Richie evidently believed dusting was a myth, and presumably had no idea that bins didn’t actually empty themselves) and partly because he felt he had to something to pay Richie back for his kindness.

But the first time he went to take the trash out of the mysteriously-non-self-emptying bin he’d had to spend several minutes just staring at it while trying to figure out how to tie a bin bag with only one hand. Anything that involved carrying anything was now twice as tiring, doing the washing up now took double the normal time and trying to put a Hawaiian shirt on a hanger was an almost Herculean labour. Though considering Richie owned several dozen shirts, and only 9 coat hangers, he probably wasn’t too bothered by Eddie’s fumbling attempts. The sheer length of time that everything took was probably the worst part of it all. Eddie had always previously prided himself on his work ethic and efficiency, but now the tiny manager in his head would berate him for how little he’d managed to get done in a day, and every chore came with criticisms floating above it in imaginary red ink. Eddie had a lot of arguments with that manager, and hated every single one of them because he knew his brain boss was right. 

It’s particularly a problem when it comes to food, because Eddie and Richie were in the midst of a fierce competition over who is the better cook, and on Eddie’s nights to make dinner he has to start prepping ages before Richie gets home from work, because he doesn’t want to tell Richie that it took him almost an hour just to chop the fucking vegetables.

Of course, Richie eventually finds out when he arrives back early one day only to witness Eddie shouting at a grater to _just stay fucking still so he can zest this goddamn lemon!_ Eddie’s citrus-scented rage is enough to allow him to get through the subsequent confession of just how much of a struggle everything is with only limited embarrassment. 

The mortification comes full-force the next day however when Richie returns laden down with a ridiculous number of gadgets designed to help him with everyday tasks. Still, the hook that now hangs in Eddie’s wardrobe (Richie’s guest room wardrobe?) is super useful when it comes to doing up the button on a shirt cuff. And Eddie almost cries with happiness when the lime stays on the spike while he zests it. Richie even claims that the knork, a fork with a serrated knife edge on one side, is in fact the best invention in the history of man because it allows him to cut steak and still have a hand available for gesticulating wildly while he tells Eddie about his day. And Richie’s help is more appreciated than Eddie can ever let him know. Ever since Eddie told him that counterweights can help train him to deal with the balance issues, Richie has taken to hanging off Eddie’s shoulder like a baby koala, and Eddie is enjoying having a lanky, chattering parasite attached to him more than he thought possible.

Which, while obviously a wonderful thing that made Eddie’s heart rate reach alarming levels, also contributed to the bizarre, confusing parody that was his A.A (after-arm) life. Because while having replaced his right arm with a rotating cast of nothing, gadgets and a foul-mothed marsupial did make him weaker than he had ever been in his life, he also found that he felt more…resilient than he had at any time before answering that phone call from Mike.

Okay, maybe _resilient_ was somewhat of an exaggeration since he hadn’t had a day yet without tears or shouting (or sometimes shouty tears) but still. Compared to his childhood avoidance of grass, dirt, blood, breathing normally and days without hourly pill regimes, he felt he was handling the whole situation reasonably well, no matter what his asshole mind manager thought. Admittedly he might have been doing better during those glorious, post-gazebo teenage years that he now remembered with a mixture of fondness and jealously. But then he’d left Derry and gone to NYU and forgotten that his mother’s blatant lies were in fact falsehoods, and had signed straight back up to believing them. Sonia hadn’t had quite as much control over him as before, considering she was having to do it long-distance, but it still been more than enough to convince him of his innate fragility. Shortly before she died, Sonia outsourced the task to Myra and the pill parade had continued unabated.

Now Eddie wasn’t as gullible as he had been during those early aspirator-hugging years, and Myra never had Sonia’s sickness skillset, and he’d sort of realised that his wife’s regime had been mostly bullshit. Yet still he’d gone along with it because…well he wasn’t entirely sure why. Because it was quieter? Easier? Because only a weakling would believe he was weak?

He didn’t really know.

What he did know was that now that he was free of either woman’s voice in his ear, and equipped with all his memories once more, plus the knowledge that he’d helped kill that motherfucking clown, he felt both weaker and stronger than he had in years.

His A.A life was weighed down with the knowledge that he was _actually_ a cripple, and buoyed up by the ability to sort of handle it. Sort of.

He’d spent more time feeling sad, and angry and content in the past few weeks than he had in the preceding twenty-two years. Maybe he was just feeling _more_ , compared to the dull haze that had been his adult life.

The only thing he could attribute this mad parody of his life to, was the mad parody of the man he was now living (staying?) with.

Eddie didn’t think the feeling he had for Richie had ever disappeared, not when he didn’t know what they were, not when he strenuously denied them and not even when he forgot about the man altogether. Neither had his feeling for men generally ever actually gone away, though he had kept them effectively imprisoned to the back of his mind with only the occasional day-trip down to his left hand.

Now though, faced with Richie’s face, those thoughts had performed the jail break of the century. Obviously the face had changed somewhat over the decades, it was now more weathered, a little hairier, not as pale and no longer decorated with coke bottles. But the hair was still just as messy even if it was tinged with grey, the eyes were still as dark as ever despite the crinkles around the edges and the smile hadn’t altered one fucking bit.

Eddie might not know what he was to Richie, but he certainly knew what Richie was to him.

This jailbreak comes to a head and the prisoners depose the brain boss altogether on the day Eddie is first fitted for a prosthetic (or _Robocop Day_ as Richie insists on calling it). Eddie was absolutely not used to his new ersatz appendage in any way, and while the ability to actually pick something up with two whole limbs once again was pretty awesome, he had already knocked three glasses to the floor and absolutely crushed a poor lime to pulp when he’d tried to push it onto the rim of his celebratory gin and tonic. It had been a day of ups and downs in other words, but he and Richie were now back at home (Richie’s place?), sat on Richie’s voluminous sofa with Eddie’s cyborg arm lying on the coffee table. _Bucky_ , as Richie had christened it, had stopped most of the usual aches and phantom pains that Eddie felt daily, and replaced them with entirely new and different aches and pains, and Richie was currently trying to massage them away.

A soft silence pervaded the room, punctuated only by Eddie’s soft grunts of relief as Richie’s long fingers worked their magic.

“So Eds,” Richie piped up after a while, “I know this might be a weird time to ask this, considering you’re currently sitting shirtless in the…my living room” Eddie’s heart skipped a beat at this point, as it did whenever these grammatical excitements arose. “And while I’m sure Stumpy Junior is appreciating the Tozier Magic Fingers Guarantee, and there probably have been better opportunities for this over the past month, but, well…I haven’t really had the balls to make use of any of them before, even though I do have excellent balls if I do say so myself, and I have reviews as well if you want to check references or anything, but I think I do have to say this at sometime, and nowtime is a sometime I suppose…because it has been a month after all, which I just said, and I’m sure you’d know even if I hadn’t just said because you know how to tell time and everything…obviously, but what I’m trying to say…”

Richie’s eyes were darting wildly between staring fixedly into Eddie’s eyes and staring determinedly at literally anywhere other than Eddie’s eyes, while his hands alternated between kneading Stumpy Junior and flailing awkwardly.

“So, what I’m trying to say…and struggling to say, which is weird because normally I’m good with my mouth, as Mrs. K. knows,” an obligatory wink here, “is that obviously you have like no pressure here whatsoever, because you have a place and a job and a wife and a whole fucking life in New York, but, um, this is also a place, right?” Richie gestures wildly to the room around them. “And jobs can move, can’t they? And I know you’re married and everything, and that’s great! But unless, it’s not great of course, and I don’t want to make assumptions….but I guess I am, because, um, well, you never like talk about your wife…so maybe…I mean unless she’s just so great in bed that you don’t want to embarrass me or anything with tales of your smokin’ hot wife or something…”

Trashmouth’s trashmouth was varying between running full pace and sputtering stalls. It seemed Eddie’s own mouth took pity on this though, because it said, quite without Eddie’s permission, “She’s not.”

“Not smokin’ or not good in bed?” Richie asks hesitantly.

“Neither. Like not at all” Eddie’s prisoners declare.

Richie grins at this, a rather relived look briefly replacing the nervousness etched onto his face.

“Good,” he continues, “or not _good_ obviously, but, like….fuck.” Richie swallows heavily. 

“Shit.” Another swallow, this time accompanied by hasty sweep of the hand across his forehead.

“I just wanted to say, that I wanted you to want…” A large gulp of air and his eyes flick shut.

“I want you to come and live me with here, in L.A. at my house with me, to live with me, because I think you’d like it, I think it would be fun and great, and it might be better than your wife and everything, and your job could be here, and because…fuck because I’ve missed you. Like just, so, fucking, much. I couldn’t even remember you and I missed you, which is ridiculous but also true, and having all three-quarters of you here has just been…like, the absolute fucking best, and the idea of losing you again, especially after we just murdered a motherfucking clown together and everything that happened, that’s not an idea I really want to have, because it would be just…and obviously you shouldn’t say yes just because I want you to, you should say it because you want you to…if you want you to that is…but, just…fuck Eds, I really don’t want to lose you again. So like, no pressure or anything, but, um…some pressure?”

Richie’s eyes spring back open again and he stares at Eddie, frantically watching his face for his reaction. Which is unfortunate, because Eddie’s face has apparently turned to stone. It takes him a while to realise that he should probably be saying something.

“So you want us to be, like, roomies?” Eddie inquires.

Richie’s face falls a little. “Well, yeah sure, but maybe roomies with…like, also…fuck…I don’t know if you’re even open to this, but I think you might be from what I remember, if I can even trust those memories, because who knows that the fuck IT did to them, but it would be awesome if you were, so just maybe you’d, um, like to…” he waves his hands vaguely in what is apparently an attempt to illustrate something. It does not help.

He tries again. “Like…maybe, this?” This time he slowly, painfully, creepingly, glacially slowly moves his face towards Eddie’s. His expression appears to be a blend of that of a child about to open a large, shiny Christmas present and a cop, one day from retirement, approaching a suspiciously beeping package. 

Eddie meets him halfway and presses their lips together. It is brief, chaste, a little chapped, and incredible. 

They pull back and simply stare at one another, drinking themselves in.

“So, like roomies with kissing?” Eddie ventures.

Richie laughs at this, a loud delighted sound that curls Eddie’s mouth into a smile. “Yeah, that.”

“Okay” Eddie replies, and Richie does an honest-to-god fist pump and laughs delightedly once more. He presses his forehead to Eddie’s, which apparently transmits his laughter through some psychic means, because soon they are both giggling like mad.

When Eddie awakes the next morning, still on the sofa where they fell asleep the night before, his mind groggy and hanging (because maybe there had been a few more celebratory gins) and his three limbs wrapped around Richie’s torso, he spends the next ten minutes simply watching Richie’s sleeping face. He looks beautiful and peaceful and maybe a little ridiculous, and Eddie is happy about all three.

Eddie has no idea what he’s going to do about the life and wife he has in New York, and he’s not entirely sure what exactly the terms of the _Roomies with kissing_ contract entails, but whatever they are, he’s pretty fucking sure it’s an upgrade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should say that I have no idea what life is really like missing an arm, everything here is purely just things I found from a quick google.
> 
> Hopefully updates will be delivered roughly weekly, and I'm thinking four chapters total.
> 
> As ever, comments, critiques and criticisms (constructive or not) are desperately welcome.


	3. Down and Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Weekly updates my ass.

As much as Eddie does appreciate _Bucky_ (yes he’s taken to calling it that too, it just seemed easier (and funnier)), he can’t help but notice that Bucky isn’t actually all that great at super-delicate tasks. Chopping, carrying things around, even doing up a belt are all things that _Eds and Bucks, the Dynamic Duo_ have gotten, well, under the belt by now. But chopsticks have been firmly avoided after The Wasabi Incident, and typing is a rather hit-and-miss affair, with a painfully noticeable time difference between QWERTASDFZXCV and UIOPHJKLBNM, and poor old G and Y are stuck in a vicious custody battle between Speedy Gonzalez on the left and Slowbro on the right. 

By far the worse though, is writing. Which ordinarily shouldn’t really matter that much, because it isn’t actually the 17th century anymore and mastery of quill and ink are no longer vital skills in today’s world. But over the past week Eddie estimates that he’s had to do more signatures than he ever has before in his life put together, and for the life of him he cannot work out which hand is better – scratch that, which hand is less worse – at the apparently vital task. If he uses his left it looks like an enthusiastic but spectacularly-untalented five year old wrote his name, and if he uses Bucky then it looks like he tied a pen to the end of an oar, and then stood up on a stepladder and tied a blindfold over his eyes before signing. It doesn’t actually matter of course, no one really looks at your signature beyond checking that there is some sort of vaguely-discernible scribble there, especially when the signee is a poor, little one-armed man, that you must stare at piteously while they complete basic paperwork. Eddie is mildly impressed with himself that he hasn’t stabbed anyone in the eye with the pen yet.

The weeks of paperwork and barely-repressed murders have all been in the service of the laborious mission of moving his whole life from one side of the country to the other, which has proven to be a rather form-filled quest. Banks, insurance, tax, car registration, actually getting a new car, doctors, dentists, driver’s licence, on and on the paper parade has marched, each one requiring another embarrassing attempt at a grown-up looking signature. Richie, whom Eddie had always assumed would have a rather chaotic-neutral approach to bureaucracy, has actually been pretty on-point with it all, having sourced and planned most of the L.A side of the operation in surprising detail. It’s almost as of Richie had been angling to have Eddie make a cross-continental relocation from the moment they got back from Derry and has been planning appropriately. Almost. 

Eddie has naturally taken a lead in the New York theatre of operations, while Richie has hung back and let Eddie handle most of the jobs. Still, he flew out with him, shared a hotel room with him (twin beds because Eddie has no idea if _roomies with kissing_ entails bed-sharing when they’re at home, let alone 2,700 miles away. And they did say roommates not bedmates after all so Eddie’s certainly not going to try and alter that while in the middle of a logistical nightmare), and has kept Eddie going with an endless supply of coffee, jokes and stump massages. The latter of which is especially useful, considering how much worse the stress of the whole rigmarole has made the phantom pains.

Eddie can’t help but think that this is the cruellest of Pennywise’s little legacies – to not only take his whole fucking arm, but to use it like some kind of goddamn voodoo doll and spend the rest of eternity jabbing it with pins and pointy embers. Neither his no-arm nor Bucky are capable of feeling anything of course, but try telling Eddie’s head that. It’s truly surreal as well, gazing down at nothing while your brain screams pain alerts at you over and over, listening to two of your senses present wildly different arguments and never being entirely sure which one to trust. The _Dannys_ (another Richie nickname that Eddie claims not to secretly smile at) also come at the most random times, it’s a rather bizarre situation to be sitting on the subway, knowing perfectly well that there is no one on your right whatsoever, but still not being entirely sure that a pack of ghost piranha aren’t actually gnawing away on your invisible limb. Luckily Richie’s fingers help a lot with getting rid of the Dannys, which of course makes no goddamn sense at all, because why, pray tell, would massaging Stumpy Junior not just make his malformed shoulder feel better but also help yank his entire arm out of the fire the phantoms seemed to like to keep it in, even though neither fire nor arm _actually fucking exist_. But whatever. Eddie is grateful, regardless of the unreality of it all.

By far the most complicated task has been, by far, the work changes he’s had to make. Eddie’s luxury and discrete car service for celebrities should do well in tinseltown, and many of his clients hop between coasts regularly enough and will only be too happy to have the same service available when in L.A. Richie has, once again, been a big help as well, plugging the business to every guest who comes on his show and forcing business cards on literally every person he meets. Eddie saw one of the neighbourhood cats the other day padding along the backyard fence with a several cards stuck under its collar, along with a note saying ‘Please take one!’ in bright green marker. With Richie pulling noticeably more than his weight on the advertising side of things, Eddie had been busy organising cars, premises and staff, a fiendishly complicated if ultimately satisfying chore. He’d eventually decided to franchise off his previous New York business, remaining the owner while leaving the day-to-day operations to Mark, his number two who’d done well in holding down the fort ever since the day Mike had called.

He was in Mark’s office now, signing away the last few documents (left hand this time, it was quicker). It was odd. He’d expected the room to still feel like _his_ office, and had prepared to try and restrain himself from staring jealously at Mark’s knick-knacks which had so imperiously invaded his turf. After all, this had always been his inner sanctum, the one place he ever felt proud of anything in his adult life, the core of everything he’d worked so hard to build up from virtually nothing. Maybe he just liked the cramped little office because it was one of his preciously few Myra-free zones. Either way he’d expected to feel protective and restive when signing over his motorised baby. Instead he found himself glad to be free of one of the last dregs of his pre-Chinese restaurant life, looking forward to running his new operation and gazing back on his old business with only a faint nostalgia, rather than the emotional possessiveness he’d been expecting.

The fact that Eddie was feeling little more than a low-key sense of freedom from the transfer must have been equally surprising to Mark, judging by the look he gave Eddie when they shook hands at the end. Of course, disturbed expressions were pretty much the course nowadays whenever anyone felt Bucky’s weird, slightly rubbery texture, but what was unusual was the fact that Mark’s eyes had widened as soon as Eddie had proffered his hand, not at the usual point of plasticky physical contact. Eddie offered him a raised eyebrow, which cause Mark to cough awkwardly and shift uncomfortably from one foot to the other.

“Well, sorry boss man, but it’s just that, you’ve never…actually done that before” Mark offered.

Eddie blanched. Done what?

“Shook my hand I mean.”

Eddie didn’t know what to say that. Surely that couldn’t be the case, they must have…

Well maybe with one of his other employees…

Shit. Had he really never…?

“And if truth be told that’s the quietest I’ve ever heard you speak to me,” Mark continued, looking relieved that Eddie wasn’t literally biting his head off. 

“Wait, what do you –“

“You’re normally shouting you see.”

Eddie really didn’t have anything to say to that. Looking back, rather shamefacedly, he guessed this had been the case. 

“I guess that – well,” Eddie tendered, desperately trying to think of some sort of excuse for his past behaviour.

“No don’t worry, it’s okay. I’m glad you seem a lot happier now. Whatever it is that’s changed…seems pretty cool. Good luck with it all.”

And with that Mark had left Eddie in his (not his) office, feeling rather embarrassed.

On the subway ride back to his and Richie’s hotel he’d quietly forensiced himself to try and work out why he’d been quite such an asshole of a boss. Sure, at first he’d done the obligatory justifications, telling himself that he’d had to be that way to get things done, and so what if he shouted sometimes, look at how goddamn successful the business had been.

After mentally slapping himself a few times though, he’d had to concede that Mark was probably right. It was probably all because of what had changed, what his life used to have been. Work wasn’t just an escape from everything it was his chance to channel all his frustrations. He’d used his employees as some sort of dumping ground for his rage. 

Now Eddie could pretend to turn a sequoia’s worth of new leaves over, but if truth be told he wasn’t sure he actually needed to anymore. He didn’t really have the same level of anger that needed exporting. Sure, he was still, in Richie’s eloquent words, _a fiery, feisty little fucker_ , but no longer did he truly have the same deep-seated pit of rage deep within him. That tangled knot of wrath that sinks down into your belly, and wraps its long fingers around your windpipe; that pours its vapours into your head and whispers righteous justifications into your ear, until you have no choice but to vent the molten heat onto, in Eddie’s care, some poor unsuspecting employees. THAT kind of anger just didn’t exist in his body anymore.

He knew why. He might not like to admit it, but it was the same thing that he’s been putting off this entire week, filling his days with endless totally-important tasks and meetings and paperwork as a way of procrastinating away from the _actually_ -important job. The Myra one.

Which is why, that Friday afternoon, the checklist now mercilessly devoid of anything else to do, and now utterly devoid of excuses, Richie and Eddie found themselves in Brooklyn standing outside a nondescript brownstone, that had, once upon a time, been Eddie’s apartment building/prison. After one hasty conversation, that they felt the need to whisper for reasons that neither of them was entirely clear about, Eddie successfully persuaded Richie to stay outside. He didn’t need Richie to see this part of his former life, like some sort of embarrassing medical condition. 

Although the glare of the sun made the window to Eddie’s old ground-floor flat an impenetrable reflection, he could feel his wife’s beady eyes pressed up against the glass, watching their conversation as if she was observing a particularly gruesome surgery.

With Eddie having persuaded Richie that he could handle this, and that Richie should just wait in the twee coffee shop across the street, he gathered his courage, marched through the entrance into the building, straight down the corridor and to the door to what was formally known as his and his wife’s flat. Everything was fine. He had this. He’d navigated his way through several excruciatingly awkward phone calls and Myra had agreed to the divorce. She was getting the flat and most of the other assets, he got his company. The paperwork was in his bag and he’d already signed his half (not wanting to let Myra see his difficulties at that particular task), it just needed hers and it would be over.

He had this.

He knocked.

And waited. Knocked again.

Myra knew perfectly well he’d be there at this time, and Eddie was sure she had been watching from the window, but she still took her sugary time.

The door swung open and he stepped determinedly inside.

He did not have this.

Eddie barely even registered Myra’s high pitched declaration that he was late (17 minutes early actually) that she used in lieu of a greeting, because the moment he stepped inside the hallway, and was surrounded once again by floral wallpaper, sickeningly-cute pictures of baby chicks and the smell of the three lavender plug-ins that Myra insisted on adding to every room, everything inside of him was vacuumed out. 

Whatever strength he had build up over the past few months, his new-found independence and determination vanished as abruptly as if they had never been there. Bucky also disappeared and the gaping nothingness of his right-hand side yawned wider and wider until Eddie felt his whole body tumble into its maw. The phantoms saw their chance and toyed with his missing arm with savage glee. His wife may have been even short than he was, but now she stood on stilts and towered over his diminutive form, which huddled to the floor like a mouse gazing up at the exterminator looming high above it.

Rodent-Eddie followed Myra through to the sitting room, quietly following her instructions to move aside the lace doily on the armchair and plump up the hen cushion before sitting there, all the while the great tides of her complaints continued to jab into his flesh, her insults about how delayed everything was, what a hassle the whole divorce was and how much simpler Eddie could have made it all if only he’d let her be in charge from the beginning (she absolutely was in charge from the beginning).

As the verbal wolves continued their assault, and Eddie dutifully murmured his assent whenever required and neatly arranged the divorce papers on the coffee table amongst the porcelain figurines of farmyard animals, he reflected that in all his soon-to-be-ex wife’s many complaints about the divorce procedure, none had actually been about the divorce itself. The cost, the paperwork, the arguments about how much of the money she would get, each one of those phone calls had been laden down with an entire box-car full of apparently humongous issues, each delivered in the same needling whine that set his teeth on edge. But the concept of getting divorced itself, the dissolution of the marriage and the idea of her husband moving out never to be seen again? That went by with nary a breathy whimper. 

On some level this wasn’t entirely surprising. It’s not as if his wife genuinely loved or cared for him, nor him for her if truth be told, and she’d be left in a pretty much identical financial position in the end. But still. The idea of her husband leaving her for another man and moving to the other side of the continent and severing all contact and metaphorical umbilical cords ought to be worth some level of argument, right? 

Right?

Apparently not. Until this point at any rate.

Because the moment Eddie lays down the pen and angles it in Myra’s direction the verbal tirade ceases and an agonising silence pervades the room.

After a few moments that stretch on for hours, Eddie dares to raise his eyes from staring at the hands in his lap and meet his wife’s face. She looks down at him, technically up at him because she is shorter than he is, but it feels like it is _down at him_ , with an expression of…disappointment etched onto her face. Not real, heartfelt disappointment though. But the sort that a certain kind of teacher uses when they have decided your work isn’t good enough and need to cloak their critique in a faux-fur coat of caring about your progress. The kind Mr Keene always wore at the pharmacy. The same one his mother used every day of her life and assured Eddie that his father would also use if only he was here.

Eddie shrank even smaller.

“So, Eddie dear,” the _dear_ was saccharine enough to kill a diabetic, “what exactly are you doing here?”

“I’m trying to divorce you Myra. As we agreed,” Eddie responded in what he hoped was the voice of a resigned adult man, but what he knew was actually that of a child desperately making excuses.

“But why?” she wheedled, and the vacuum inside Eddie’s chest grew larger and larger.

“For the reasons we discussed. I’m sorry Myra but I don’t love you. You knew that. You knew that I’m…that I’m gay. You must have known that. These are valid reasons,” Eddie continues in what is ideally a definitive tone, and not a plaintive one.

“None of them matter. You know what I mean.”

“I haven’t the faintest –”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about, my poor little Eddie-bear.” The hollowness becomes infinite.

Seeing that Eddie isn’t going to, cannot, protest any further, Myra continues, a smile plastered on her face. “What I’m talking about, and what you know very well my darling pumpkin, is that you _need me_. Exactly the same way you needed your mother. You’re too weak,” a pitying smirk here.

“Too sickly,” her brow knotted in alleged concern and her eyes gleamed.

“Too crippled,” she concluded, her grin having reached Grinch-like proportions.

It was odd, or perhaps entirely expected, how much her words sounded like those of Eddie’s mind manager. But while he had always appeared as a man in his 50s with a walrus moustache and one of those green visor things for some reason, and barked his critiques in a gruff growl, Myra delivered her script in the same honeydew-sweet drip that Eddie remembered so well from his childhood. The face was different to his mother’s though, despite their superficial resemblance. Compared to Sonia, Myra’s was more…it had a sort of…

Delight.

“That’s not true. I – I’m not –” the hollowed-out shell of Eddie Kaspbrak tried to protest.

“Yes you are my dear. If you weren’t then why are you only performing this ridiculous nonsense now? If you were able to live without me or your mother – why haven’t you been doing so?” she explains in the manner one would tell a petulant child that two and two do in face make four, that _do you see where you went wrong?_ manner that has ostentations of being helpful, but is truly there to emphasise just how foolish the child actually is.

Perhaps Eddie is that foolish, because he only realises in that very moment the fundamental difference between his mother and his wife. Sonia Kaspbrak had fundamentally been a frightened woman, terrified of everything, everywhere and everyone, but what scared her most of all was the idea of losing her precious son from her tentacular clutches. The way she acted, the theatrics, the crying, the lies, the tears – all had been a way of assuaging that fear, of keeping her baby as close and dependent on her as he had always remained an infant.

But Myra Kaspbrak meanwhile – she acted this way because she enjoyed it. She never _needed_ a dependent man-baby of a husband, was never beset by a constant fear that could only be relieved through constant lies and manipulation. She just fucking liked it. The process of taking a person and reducing them to plasticine to be moulded into an obedient show-dog was her favourite thing in the world.

Not that this realisation did Eddie any good. Already he could feel himself submitting back to her, back to the comforting routine that a weak man like himself inevitably relied on. Her words must be true, cruel as they were.

Weak, sickly and crippled.

But then something happens. 

“Just because you’re hanging around those little ‘friends’ of yours again”, Myra continues her lecture, with an acidic emphasis on the word _friends_ , “doesn’t mean you don’t still need me does it? Anyway your mother told me about them, reprobates the lot of them, not good for you at all. Especially _that_ one, the lanky, funny-looking freak that you claim to be living with –”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Wha-what did you just say? Dear?” her voice shifts clumsily from steel to saccharine.

“You’re right about me. I’m not _sickly_ as you put it, but I am weak and I guess I am a fucking cripple. And I never would have the strength to leave you or what I laughingly refer to as my mother by myself. But I’m not by myself am I?”

Eddie spots Richie peering in through the window, his eyes wide as paella pans peeking above the window sill.

“I’ve got Richie and I’ve got the rest of the Losers, and so fucking what if I need them? I certainly don’t need you.”

Myra claps her hands to her face like she’s been slapped and gasps, the high-pitched indignant whine of a ruptured steam engine.

“And you know what’s really weak and pathetic? This.” Eddie continues, gesturing at Myra. “Controlling someone else as a source of a goddamn pleasure. Go do something with your life for God’s sake Myra. Something by yourself without demanding some sort of…human crutch that you never needed in the first fucking place.”

“But –”

“Sign the fucking form Myra. I’m out.”

After a few more loud gasps and aborted attempts at speech, she signs the fucking form.

He packs up and leaves without another word.

Myra doesn’t make a sound.

As Eddie strides out of the building, and Richie joins him jabbering away in an almost awed-sounding voice about how _fucking a-ma-zing_ that was, Eddie giggles to himself a little.

Who would have thought that his second amputation would feel so fucking good?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, comments, critiques and criticisms (constructive or not) are always welcome.


	4. In and Out, and Up.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Screw it, let's write some smut.

Eddie can’t help but feel a little bit guilty really.

The universe has done everything it can to dump a lanky-shaped piece of happiness in his lap, and he still doesn’t think it’s enough. His greedy little ass just wants _more_.

There’s so much he should enjoy, so much to be utterly delighted with, and Eddie does and is and loves every second of it…but. 

Still.

There is a constant niggling in the back of his head, a desperate, furtive, ear-whispering little _but what about…? what if….? wouldn’t it be better if….?_

Eddie’s mind manager has very helpfully provided a nicely-formatted, colour-coded spreadsheet listing all the pros and cons of his new post-divorce, post-amputation post-Pennywise life, and there is absolutely no denying that the pros side considerably outnumbers the cons:

\- Number one, there is the enormous benefit of being free of the two particularly aggravating cons that dogged so much of his former life, now that the enormous, blubbery weights of leaden manipulation called his wife and mother have been thoroughly exiled.

\- Secondly, he gets to live in a sweet house in L.A. Admittedly the rather haphazard decoration could use a little work, but there’s no denying that ~~Richie’s~~ their house is pretty awesome, in a great location and well-stocked with a fine collection of _cool shit_ as Richie calls it, or _nice junk_ as Eddie puts it. Between their incomes, this little assortment is only set to grow, and Eddie’s pretty damn fine with that.

\- Then there is the titanic-sized cargo ship delivering what-should-be-the-utter-bliss of living with his best friend. And honestly, that is actually pretty fucking awesome. He hasn’t laughed this much, or made anyone else laugh that much, since he was a teenager, and he’s age-regressed in the best way possible. He and Richie spend most of their time winding one another up, bickering playfully and behaving like the averagely overgrown kids that they actually are (very overgrown in Riche’s case, and only a little in Eddie’s, so they balance out to averagely overgrown), and complement this with some nice adult time as well, with quiet nights in and the occasional mature day trip. A lot of the time, it’s no different to their teenage years, but now with better wine, and frankly if that isn’t the best of childhood and adulthood fused together, Eddie doesn’t know what is.

\- Getting to see the new evolved form of Richie nowadays is also pretty great. There is an endless fascination in watching how he is both entirely familiar, and somewhat different, the result of their long, long years apart. He’s still the same adorable idiot, but now with just a little more refinement, a touch more restraint and maybe a dash more knows-what-the fuck-he’s doing and to be honest, this director’s cut version of Richie Tozier is attractive as hell.

\- He gets to see Richie’s smile. Correction: smiles. There are a few – there’s his shit-eating grin, his teasing smirk, the delighted beam that appears in between guffaws when Eds gets off a good one, and, possibly Eddie’s favourite, there’s that soft little smile that makes his heart do loop-the-loops.

\- Kissing Richie. He’s really fucking good at it. Toe-curlingly so.

\- No more Myra sloppy slug tongue kisses. Instead there’s the firm-but-soft, passionate-yet-gentle, needy-yet-skilled kisses he gets with Richie. Yes he knows kissing Richie effectively appears twice on the spreadsheet but so what? It’s not his fault that thought about Richie’s lips make up so much of his daily thoughts. Blame the lips. And tongue.

\- Being comfortable in himself. Well, not totally comfortable of course. Eddie is Eddie after all, and anxiety is always nesting in his guts, but it does at least seem to be hibernating a lot of the time. He’s at least one foot out of the closet for fuck’s sake, which is one hell of an achievement compared to the past four decades. When he spots an attractive, lanky, kind of a hot mess-looking guy on the street, Eddie no longer has to deliberately avert his gaze. Maybe he even points them out to Richie. The Trashmouth always seems to point out the cute, well-dressed short guys in return. For some reason.

\- All the satisfaction of building something successful with his new company, without the heightened blood pressure and retroactive guilt of having to use his job as a dumping ground for his vented rage.

\- Less rage generally. Not no rage of course. Eddie is Eddie.

\- Being in contact with all the Losers again. They haven’t been able to meet back up again in the real world, but their weekly Skype dates are the most wonderful fuel for Eddie’s soul.

\- Getting to watch what he wants on Netflix, without having to get approval.

\- Getting to cook what he wants, and actually having someone who enjoys what he makes, rather than moan how unhealthy it all is before dousing it in butter.

\- Actually getting to _live his fucking life_ , rather than just trying to get through it as quietly as possible.

Meanwhile, in the con column he only had:

\- L.A traffic.

\- Missing a fucking arm.

Obviously that second one was written in a noticeably larger, and bright neon-green, font than the others but still. All in all, it was pretty damn clear that the scales were tipped so overwhelmingly in one direction that that blindfolded justice lady must have a permanently curved spine by now. Eddie feels a little guilty for giving her scoliosis, even though she doesn’t actually exist. 

Most of the guilt though comes from the fact that even with the scales of contentment weighted so heavily in one direction, Eddie is still only _happy, but_ instead of _happy period_. And that constant, chirping, _but what if…_ just will not go away, no matter how hard Eddie tries.

Because, frankly, the whole _being in love with Richie_ thing isn’t going away, and _Roomies with kissing_ just isn’t going to cut it anymore. Not when the man he loves is right fucking there. Eddie can’t ignore that.

In fact, he doesn’t think he was ever able to ignore this fact that glares with a thousand suns of blazing obviousness. Teenage Eddie could of course teach a masterclass about denying the fact, both consciously and subconsciously, but straight-out ignoring it? Not a damn chance. Even when Eddie forgot Richie’s existence for twenty-two long years his feelings for him never actually disappeared altogether. They just subbed out as an imaginary man, a slightly blurry silhouette of a tall, messily-haired figure that played the role of the comparative better alternative in Eddie’s life. Those brief little flashes of a fantasised nicer alternative dimension where Eddie was married to this this lanky shadow, and have never met anyone named Myra. These little indulgencies were always fleeting, and rapidly consigned to the recycling bin with some stern self-chiding, but they were pretty frequent. The memory-silhouette only stuck around for any length of time when Eddie had an appointment with his left hand and a box of tissues because those fantasies? Those were positively soaked in Tinges of the Trashmouth. Each one was replete with touches of his forgotten friend – big hands with long fingers touching him, dark eyes staring hungrily down at him, gangly legs wrapped around him, dark hair pooled on the pillow…

Now being confronted with the actual Richie in the actual flesh – getting so close to living out those fantasies of both the domestic and sexual flavour but falling agonisingly short – is a Tartarus-level torture of denial.

Sometimes Eddie indulges himself in letting himself think that maybe, just maybe, Richie feels the same way. He does seem to be very (very very) fond of him after all. So perhaps Richie might also be interested in upgrading their current contract to something more. But obviously Eddie has to be at least 1450% sure before he actually makes the offer, so is the way of the coward, so he decides to spend the next week watching Richie for clues and compiling a report on his behaviour:

**Monday**

Richie has always been pretty generous with generous with his touch-distribution to Eddie, but this day nets him a full-on bonanza of cuddles. Richie spends seemingly the entire evening with him on the sofa, wrapped around him like a magnetic koala while they binge shitty movies. Eddie lets himself sink into the warm pudding of Richie’s hugs and feel his heart jump about in his chest like it’s going for an Olympic gold.

Eddie add the ‘positive sign’ tag to this evening’s report before falling asleep to fuzzily soft dreams.

**Tuesday**

Eddie comes home from a hard day at work, his joints cemented in fatigue, only to find Richie standing in his (their) living room beneath a hand-made (judging by the charmingly slapdash quality) banner proclaiming ‘Happy 1-month anniversary!’ and wearing a party hat that said ‘Happy Bar-Mitzvah’, who immediately thrusted two shots into Eddie’s hands.

“Um…who are we hosting a bar-mitzvah for and why are giving them tequila?” Eddie inquired.

“No one! This was all the shop had I promise! We’re actually celebrating the fact that it’s been exactly a month see you opened the new business you see,” Richie replied, looking a little disappointed that Eddie hadn’t realised.

The date had completely slipped his exhausted mind. But the puppy look on Richie’s face leeched the tiredness from his bones in an instant.

“Well in that case,” Eddie said, pausing only to tip the first shot back, “I want to know why didn’t you make custom hats as well? That’s just lazy.”

“Hey the banner took me long enough!” Richie protested affectionally, downing his own tequila.

The rest of the evening developed into a smorgasbord of alcohol-fuelled ridiculousness – a lot of impromptu karaoke, one elaborate prank call to Stan followed by twenty solid minutes of Eddie laughing himself to tears at Richie’s impression of ‘Stan when he’s woken up at three in the morning by a sexy phone call from a horny owl’ and a brief horse ride around the neighbourhood (Eddie was the horse).

Later on however, they find themselves tangled up on the sofa, kissing softly, which isn’t exactly unusual. But the gin flowing through Eddie’s veins only made his desire that much harder to control. His didn’t help that Richie was sat there looking just so fucking good, with his slightly sweat-dampened curls resting on his flushed face and his eyes staring at Eddie like he was the creamiest-looking cupcake in the shop. When Eddie leaned in for another kiss, he was a lot less shy with his tongue this time, running it teasingly across Richie’s lower lip, slipping it hungrily inside as soon as Richie’s mouth dropped open. When Eddie wrapped his hands in Richie’s hair and tugged, Richie _groaned_ and Eddie felt a delicious jolt in his stomach at the sound. He pushed Richie down into the cushions, clambering himself atop his lanky frame and grinding his hardness down onto Richie’s, eliciting the most delicious whimpers and pants from him. But just as Eddie’s hand, which had been inching down Richie’s chest, undoing buttons as it went, reached Richie’s belt, the Trashmouth suddenly launched himself into a standing position, rudely depositing Eddie onto the floor.

He stared down at the shorter man, breathing heavily, eyes dark, hungry and confused. “Um…sorry Eds. Too much to drink. I think I’m going to be sick.”

He dashed to the bathroom and locked the door behind him without another glance. 

Eddie walked up to the door a couple of minutes later, knocked softly and asked if Richie was okay. He didn’t get a reply, nor did he hear any sounds of heaving or retching, only the shower running. He didn’t hear the water heater kick on either.

Eddie went to bed drunk, horny and confused.

**Wednesday**

Eddie wakes up blissfully late the next day, very glad of his decision not to go into work, and he feels both guilty and a little smug at the thought of Richie having to struggle hungover through his morning meeting.

His memories of the night before are too hazy, too arousing and too troublesome to bear much thought, so Eddie tries (tries) to ignore them and instead focus on reciprocating Richie’s gesture. It was really lovely of him to throw Eddie a little work anniversary, regardless of what that means or doesn’t in regards to the potential relationship upgrade.

So he gets bust arranging a ‘Richie Tozier appreciation evening’, cleaning the whole house, spending several hours crafting the perfect playlist and lining up a selection of movies that he remembers Richie saying he wanted to see. He’s just putting the finishing touches to an absurd dinner that Richie claimed he dreamt once and has always wanted to try (spaghetti with bacon, maple syrup and milk) as Richie walks through the door.

“Perfect timing Chee, I’ve just finished” Eddie calls out from the kitchen.

“Hey, what’s all this?” Richie asks, grinning as he examines the film selection.

“Just a little thank you for last night”

“Oh..well you didn’t, um have to do that. But…thanks” Richie responds, his voice enthusiastic, but his eyes don’t meet Eddie’s.

They stay stuck to his plate even as Eddie watches him for his reaction to the culinary experiment, which Richie deems worthy of an appreciative moan.

“This is incredible Eds, I’ve no idea how you managed to make this work so well!”

Eddie smiles. “Hey, it was your inspired idea. I just carried it out.”

Richie’s eyes dart back down to his food. “Yeah, exactly. It was a ‘Richie idea’”, a phrase he makes sound disappointing. “You’re the genius that made it taste good.”

Eddie’s not sure what to say to that. After a moment he offers “But remember that dish you did last week? That was inspired –”

“It was just a stir-fry.”

A slight silence falls, broken only by the sounds of tasty munching. 

“I listened to your show this afternoon. It was amazing, that bit with the cantaloupe and the bunny had me in-”

“It was the same old shtick.”

And so the rest of the evening proceeds – with Richie apparently genuinely enjoying it, enthusiastically thanking Eddie for everything he does, but swatting down every one of Eddie’s complements with a self-depreciating remark.

Eddie goes to bed annoyingly sober and even more confused.

**Thursday**

Eddie spends Thursday lunchtime working on one of the new cheap cars he’d acquired for the business and had been spending his downtime fixing up. It was one of the most relaxing things Eddie had ever found, and could happily spend hours Bucky-deep inside of a car’s guts. Not that someone who had wandered randomly into the garage would see someone who appeared to be the picture of serenity, instead they would be met with the sight of a short man in low-hanging sweats and a vest, covered in grease and sweat, bent over the hood of a car, waving his tools around angrily and muttering about this ‘piece of shit starter motor’ continuously under his breath. 

Richie was the one who was confronted with such a sight this day. Eddie only knew this because he heard a whispered ‘Holy shit’ from behind him.

He turned around to see Richie standing there, bug-eyed and slack-jawed, holding two bags from the sandwich joint around the corner. 

“Oh…hey Chee. What, um, what are you doing here?” Eddie asks haltingly, unsure why Richie is looking at him like he wants to devour the finest cut of meat in the world. Nervously, Eddie sweeps his damp hair back from his brow, leaving a small smudge of grease on his forehead.

Richie swallows heavily.

After a moment he marches forward looking both determined and surprised, as if his legs are moving him at their own volition. He throws the two bags haphazardly onto a table, his eyes never leaving Eddie. As soon as he reaches him, one arm wraps around Eddie’s torso and the other buries itself in his hair, and he ducks his head down and kisses him desperately.

Oh. That’s what he wanted.

Richie’s feelings are pretty obvious – it feels like he was hard before their lips even connected, and Eddie is rapidly on his way to joining him – and Eddie has never felt so _desired_ before. The hunger in Richie’s hands as they grip him desperately and in his tongue as it duels passionately with Eddie’s is almost overwhelming, and what’s more is that it is clearly hunger _for Eddie_. This isn’t just Richie being in the mood and Eddie being the nearest available relief, Richie is like this because of him. He made Richie feel like this. Richie wants him, and god, he doesn’t think anything has made him feel more aroused than he has at this point. 

He kissed Richie back fiercely, and runs his hands up and down Richie’s back, desperate to feel as much of him as possible. When his hands make their way down to his ass and for the first time he actually squeezes, Richie jerks forward and lets out a little choking sound. He pulls back from the kiss, opens his mouth to say something and –

The alarm on Eddie’s phone goes off.

“Shit, sorry” Eddie mutters, scrambling to turn off the annoying trilling. “My lunch time is up. I’ve got to go pick up a client.”

“Oh, no problem.” Richie adjusts his glasses on his flushed face and looks at the floor. “I brought you lunch, just eat it whenever, and I’ll see you at home tonight, right?” Richie gabbles at the speed of light, turns around and leaves the room like it’s on fire.

Eddie sighs, and changes into the suit he wears when driving, sighing as he has to tug his shirt on over the grease stains, and struggling to do his pants up over his lingering boner.

But when he gets home that night, he finds that Richie has already made dinner and is apparently only capable of making the most generic kind of small talk available. All the passion Eddie saw earlier has been wiped away, replaced only with a kind of bland distance, acting as if Eddie is kind of boring cousin one makes obligatory conversation with every five years at a family wedding.

Richie goes to bed early that night, leaving Eddie sitting on the couch, barely watching a movie and making a stew of his thoughts.

**Friday**

Eddie spends the rest of the evening, a night of very little sleep and a good deal of Friday morning continuing to make his stew before eventually coming to a conclusion. He cannot do this anymore. 

His Richie Report is rather inconclusive and he still doesn’t know what exactly it is his best friend wants, but he knows now that he doesn’t want what Eddie does. He might want him as a roomie, as a snuggle blanket and as occasional sexual outlet, but nothing more. Which is fine of course, but if that’s all Eddie’s going to get here, to be that close to Richie and get only his table scraps, well…that’s not a torture Eddie is prepared to put up with anymore, spreadsheet be damned.

So Eddie spends the rest of the day preparing what he’s going to say and writing it neatly out on cue cards, which he lines up carefully on the dining room table, next to a glass of water and a tumbler of rum, just in case he needs it. He knows this is a ridiculous way of telling your friend that you can’t live with them anymore because being embarrassingly in love with them is evidently too painful, but so what? The only way he’s going to be able to get through this intact and with an acceptable number of tears if he plans it, so that’s what he did.

It still didn’t stop the shortness of his breath as he sat there waiting for Richie to come home, nor the trembling of his fingers as he heard him open the door, or even the great lump in his throat as Richie entered the room, looking puzzled to see Eddie sitting there like he was about to interview him for a job.

“Uh...hey Eds, what’s going on?”

Eddie clears his throat in a desperate attempt at sifting the lump from it. He breathes deeply and begins “Richie, I’m sorry to simply drop this on you, but -”

“Eddie, if this is about getting a cat, you don’t need to do a full presentation, I’ve already told you I’m completely on board” Richie interrupts.

“It’s not that about.” Eddie breathes again and tries once more. “I’m afraid I’ve been feeling that -”

“Look if this is about the washing up the other day, I’m sorry but I really needed it to make a rocket ship and –”

“Beep fucking beep Chee – Richie!”

Richie beeps.

“Sorry. But I need to get through this okay?” Eddie asks, and Richie nods.

Eddie’s eyes turn back to the increasingly blurry words. “I’m afraid I’ve been feeling that we can’t go on like this anymore. We can’t live together. I’m sure you know why.”

_It’s amazing_ , Eddie reflect bitterly, _how much work created so few words_. It’s all he could stomach to say in the end.

“I want you to know I don’t blame you. I’m thankful for everything that you’ve done and it’s all meant a lot to me. I just can’t handle the differences in our feelings.” The words are completely blurred by now, Eddie is quoting from memory. Richie is still mercifully silent.

“It’s not your fault. I wouldn’t expect you to fall in lo-” he’s not going to say that word. He can’t. “To have those feelings for a coward. For a cripple who took forty years to come out the closet, who can’t do anything without relying on others, who was so helpless by himself that he went crawling back to his mother and married her successor. You’ve always been a dumbass, but never that much of a dumbass, right?”

He’d decided to end on a joke to try and keep it friendly and casual.

The silence does not sound friendly and casual.

“It’s alright Richie. You don’t have to say anything. I’ll, um, I’ll just go…” Where exactly wasn’t clear, but more than anything right then, Eddie knew that he had to just _go_. He dashed quickly across the room, head down, heart thundering and his throat prickling, when suddenly Richie’s hand shot out of the blurriness that surrounded him and grabbed Eddie gently by the wrist.

“Christ on a stick Eds, what the hell are you talking about?”

Eddie has nothing to say to this, and simply gapes wordlessly at his (possibly former, creeped-out) friend.

“Shit, do you…do you actually think those things about yourself?” Richie asks. Eddie nods. He thinks his answer is pretty obvious. He also thinks the sky is blue and bears shit in the woods.

But he is curious to note the fact that Riche’s eyes appear to be just as wet as his own. They look…mournful? Sorrowful? Guilty?

“God Eddie, I’m so sorry. I mean I knew you had issues, and everything, we all do, obviously, we’re the fucking Losers Club, but…Fuck! I can’t believe I let you stew in this…this bullshit! Because you know that what you just said is right? Like, I love you and everything, but everything that just came out your mouth was complete and utter bullshit.”

Eddie’s heart stops for a full minute at the l-word, even though he knows perfectly well that Richie doesn’t mean what he hopes he means.

Richie takes Eddie’s hands, both Bucky and Realsy, in his and ducks his head down so he can intercept Eddie’s eyes from staring fixedly at the floor.

“Look, I know you probably have your mother’s and Myra’s and that fucking clowns voices in your head telling you otherwise, and shit, I really should have been telling your more often otherwise, I mean I kinda did, and tried to, but fuck it’s hard, and…” he interrupts his desperate ramble just long enough to take a shuddering breath before cupping Eddie’s face and saying in a more sincere voice than Eddie thinks he has ever heard emerge from the Trashmouth’s mouth before, “You are incredible Eds.”

Richie pauses to press their foreheads together, as if trying to force his sincerity through one skull and into another, before continuing. “Yeah it might have taken you a while to tumble out of the closet, but after everything you’ve been through? You got dealt one of the shittiest hands some asshole called Fate ever handed out, like an unsuited two and a seven and a bitch of a mother who was never going to give you a chance no matter what you did. And then to come through that like, three-quarters unscathed, is nothing short of being worth a goddamn sainthood in my humble fucking opinion. Do you think most of us could have done that? I’ve never seen anything as brave as you for having a go at Myra the way that you did. Or as hot for that matter. And as for you being a coward? That’s the most laughable thing I’ve ever heard, and I’m a comedy DJ, so I’m like basically a scientist when it comes to chucks, and you being anything but the bravest little toaster is top-tier hilarious.”

“But -”

“And yes Eds,” Richie continues undeterred, “you are a cripple. But you’re still the prettiest cripple I’ve ever laid my admittedly shit eyes on.”

Eddie is reeling, he feels himself spinning endlessly on the spot, tumbling over himself head over heels and pirouetting into nothingness. It is the most amazing, earth-crumbling feeling he has ever felt, and it leaves him without the faintest clue what to do or say next, not least because his voice has seemingly tumbled away into the abyss.

Unfortunately, Richie doesn’t think his new mutism is a good sign. He drops his hands back into his lap and looks away.

“Shit. Unless of course your already knew all that, and actually you were just saying you didn’t because you’re too polite to say you just want to live with some kind of weird lecherous loser from your childhood that won’t just freaking leave you alone. Because if so I like, get it, I really do, I mean you’ve just finally Shawhanked your way out of your mother’s jail, and crawled through the river of shit that was your marriage, and fought a demon clown that probably doesn’t really fit into this metaphor, maybe he was in like a deleted scene or something? I’ve got it on blu-ray, we could check the director’s commentary or something I guess, but, fuck, I suppose _the point is_ , that I get if you just want to be free and live your life, and date around or whatever. And me basically kidnapping you, and demanding you live with me, and then insisting that you kiss me and make-out with me, and try and trick you into working me over like one of your cars, in this creepy desperate pyramid of neediness that I’m dragging your round, and -”

Richie continues to ramble, his voice sounding a hair’s breadth away from outright panic. Eddies wishes desperately he could help him but feels helplessly paralysed. His mouth is dry and empty, his brain frozen and his heart is threatening to bore its way out of his chest. He cannot do anything right now. He is stuck processing, loading bar frozen at 27%. He has no words.

Correction.

He has three words.

“I love you.”

That shuts Richie up.

“I love you” Eddie says again. He adds “Richie” onto the end, just in case he thought he might be talking about someone else. 

Richie gapes at him. “What?”

Apparently the dumbass he loves still doesn’t get that Eddie loves him. Dumbass. Eddie thinks maybe now he should just lay it all out, consequences be damned. He feels too elated to do anything else.

“I’m in love with you Chee. Have been for literally decades, even those ones where I forgot about you. You are weird, and you make too many ‘your mum’ jokes for a man your age, and you’re just as much of a loser as I am. Still in love with you. I don’t know if you fully feel the same or not or whatever, but I want to be with you mmph”

His words are cut off by Richie’s lips positively attacking his own. He should be used to Richie’s kisses by now, but the passion, the feeling, _the love_ behind this one is more than anything he’s ever experienced before. It takes him a while to pull back, but he needs to be sure.

“So, you want more than roomies with kisses? Just to be sure?” he asks.

“Oh god so much more.”

And there’s something about the way that Richie says that. There’s a certain desperation in his kiss, a pliancy in the way he sinks back into the sofa and lets Eddie climb on top of him, an energy that seems to thrum through his body that lights a fire in Eddie’s chest. It makes him feel proud and victorious and like Musafa is whispering in his ear and telling him that he can claim everything before him.

“I want to fuck you” he finds himself muttering lowly.

As the words register in his brain, he snaps his head back and stares at Richie slightly horrified, his mouth open like a confused guppy while Richie gapes right back at him like some sort of delighted salmon. “Yes please” he squeaks out, his nodding head springing up and down. 

Eddie’s head meanwhile is spinning, his lungs are tightening and he can feel reality drop the floor away from beneath him. Everything is happening, it’s all he’s ever wanted, but it’s just so much…

Richie must sense what’s going on, because he gently cups Eddie’s face with one hand and, using his patented soft voice, says “Hey Eds, it’s okay. We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do”, and Eddie feels the floor reattach itself to his feet.

“No, it’s not that. I want to. Like…a lot. If you want to, and everything, it’s just that…”

“Have you ever done, um, this before?” Richie asks carefully.

“No Richie. I’m pretty sure you’d know if I’d ever fucked you before”, which huffed a laugh out of the taller man, before he asked once more. “Have you done, anything, with a man before?”

“Oh, is that what you are?”, another huff, “And no I haven’t. At all. Which I know…is…like I should have…fuck. I want to so fucking bad. With you I mean.”

Richie looks as flushed as Eddie feels, and he swallows heavily. “Then do it.”

They dive on one another once more and quickly descend into a frantic tangled mess of limbs, lips and laughter as they desperately try to strip the clothes from one another. Obviously having a no-arm has never made undressing oneself the easiest task, let alone stripping someone with as ridiculous a body as Richie Tozier. His legs just _keep going on and on_ , it took a whole two minutes just to drag his jeans down them. Not that he seemed to mind, judging by the encouraging words dropping from his lips like a hormonal waterfall.

It was at that point that Eddie realised the sofa just wasn’t going to provide sufficient space for the planned activities, and you had to be mindful of logistics at a time like this. He wanted to scoop Richie up into his arms and carry him bridal-style down the hall, but he wasn’t entirely sure poor Bucky was up to that, so he settled for grabbing Richie around the wrist and pulling him gently (demandingly) to his bedroom, depositing him on the bed and immediately crawling back on top of him. It was the first he really got to look at Richie’s naked form, and he indulged himself in it completely. His friend’s body was a lot more weathered than he remembered it, the hair more thinning, the skin a lot less smooth and dotted with crow’s feet and creases, like someone had taken the Trashmouth he knew and run his body through a wringer.

God he was beautiful.

Eddie should have been embarrassed about his own body, with it’s greying hairs and growing paunch, but whatever care he normally had were firstly disposed by the hunger that was evident in the taller man’s eyes, and secondly his thoughts were too occupied by the multitude of things he wanted to do his friend that lay beneath his thighs. He wanted to do _everything_ , he wanted to touch _everywhere_ and he wanted to taste _all of it_. Eddie felt like a hormonal teenager crossed with a sex-starved nun who had just escaped the convent. He wanted it all, and it certainly seemed like his roomie wanted the same. Judging by the way he was fumbling with one hand in his bedside drawer and pulling out a well-loved bottle of lube and practically forcing it into Eddie’s hand, it was pretty clear what exactly it was he wanted right now.

But as he looked down at Richie’s entrance, winking enticingly at him from between his legs, Eddie couldn’t help but hesitate a little, intimidated by it all.

“Hey,” Richie said gently, “if you’re not sure about anything, just say. I can always offer you pointers for what to do with your…pointer”.

Eddie grinned. “Stick you with the pointy end right?”

Richie grinned right back. “Well, yeah of course. But first…” and he grabbed Eddie’s left hand wrapped his lips around his fingers, sucking on them hungrily. Eddie felt his stomach drop deliciously, like he was on the most arousing rollercoaster ever built. Then Richie pulled them from his mouth with a soft pop and a thin string of saliva, and began to generously coat the fingers in lube, staring directly into Eddie’s eyes the entire time, and the shorter man grew harder than he ever thought he had been before.

Richie guided Eddie’s hand down between his legs, and let Eddie curiously stroke his rim, spreading the lube and delighting in the rough-smooth-soft texture. Struggling to tear his eyes away from the pink rosebud, he glanced up at Richie just long enough to see him nod, before darting his gaze back and watching his finger press in. The sight was mesmerising, watching the other man’s body just…give way to him to like that. Only a soft hiss tore his rapt attention away and he looked up with concern.

“Are you okay? I can stop, we don’t have to do this, shit I’m probably doing it all wrong…”

“Eds, you’re doing great.” He pulls him down and kisses him tenderly. “Proud of you. Just, sorry, it’s kinda been a while for me. So just…go slow?”

Eddie lets out the breath and he hadn’t realised he’d been holding, and began pressing in once more at a more measured pace this time. He slowly worked his finger, marvelling at how Richie began to relax around him, how his reaction changed from withheld winces to relaxed smiles and soft gasps. He was torn between studying what he was doing carefully, focusing on the experiment, carefully trying which moves and paces elicited the best reactions; and just indulging himself in the _feel_ of it all. The heat, the tightness, the quivering walls that seemed to suck his finger further in, needily devouring it – it was like nothing he had ever felt before.

“Try curling your finger.” Richie said. “If you just like hook it, then you might be able to – FUCK! Do that again!” He moaned and Eddie couldn’t help but preen a little. “How the hell did you know how to do that Eds?”

“Google” Eddie replied with a shrug and a smirk.

“Add another. Please” Richie said in a voice that was remarkably close to a whimper.

Eddie complied happily, and found himself with a whole new repertoire of moves to try, as he thrust and rubbed and scissored. He could feel his body move from tension to openness to pleasure to _need_. Eddie pressed in a third finger just because he could and Richie jerked as he did so, and let out a keening sound that Eddie never imagined he would ever hear in his life, and was infinitely glad he got the chance to do so.

After a few more minutes of playing Richie like the sexiest instrument who ever lived, the Trashmouth gasped out, “Okay I’m ready. I can’t wait any longer. I fucking need you to fuck me Eds” He tore open a condom, sat up for a moment and bent forwards, rolling it slowly down Eddie’s leaking hardness, kissing his navel as he did so, before throwing himself back down onto the bed.

Still nervous about hurting Richie, Eddie grabbed the lube bottle and went to apply some more to his length, but rather misjudged the strength of Bucky’s grip and accidentally squeezed out an enormous stream that shot across the room and hit the wall with a soft splot. This naturally elicited a couple of minutes of laughter from the pair, and helpfully broke the nervous tension that had been growing within Eddie. But still, as he pressed himself against Richie’s entrance and felt his legs hook around behind him (which he was grateful for, because frankly he hadn’t the faintest clue was he was supposed to do with them), he couldn’t help but halt apprehensively as he felt his breath quicken.

But Richie, as ever, seemed to know exactly what to do. “Ed, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. But speaking personally here, I’ve totally been waiting like two and a half decades to get fucked by the Eddie Kaspbrak, so if you want to just, you know, hammer away, that’d be great. Like a serial killer with a sledgehammer.”

Eddie barked out a grateful laugh, before composing his face into something appropriately serious. After all, losing one of your virginities to the man you loved ought to be serious business. He slowly pressed in, struggling to keep his eyes from rolling back at the feel of the fierce tightness. Richie’s wincing gasp made him halt all movement, but his dorky thumbs up made him slowly push onwards until his hips were flush with the curves of Richie’s ass. He inhaled deeply, eyes torn between staring at the beautiful sight of Richie’s face, eyes wide and blown, skin flushed and mouth open and panting, and the beautifully obscene sight of the taller man stretched around him. Knowing to wait for a few moments for his partner to adjust (thank you Google), and because to be frank Eddie needed a moment to collect himself to stop it being over right then and there considering just how _fucking good Richie felt_ , he waited for the Trashmouth to offer soft words of encouragement, before slowly pulling out half-way and shoving back in. And.

Oh God.

It felt incredible.

The heat, the tightness, the way Richie’s walls seemed to grip and stroke his hardness, the clench of his heels into his backside, the dig of his fingers into his back, his straining leaking cock that rubbed against his stomach when he leant over to kiss him, the way his whole body would jolt at a particularly strong thrust and his head would be thrown back to expose his neck for Eddie to bury his face into…

It was amazing.

Nothing like the handful of often-aborted occasions he had been able to stomach doing anything with Myra more than their weekly, hasty, eyes-averted hand actions. But perhaps the biggest difference was in the reaction he could elicit. Myra would typically just repeat the breathy ‘oohs!’ of an old woman who’s been offered a rich tea biscuit, varied only by the occasional disapproving hum.

But the sounds that Richie would make, the moans, the grunts, the gasps and whimpers and encouragements and _fucks_ and _Eds_ and _I love yous_ , each one was like music to Eddie’s ears and tonight he played Richie like a goddamn orchestra in a bid to hear them all. At times he thought he ought to be trying to build some sort of steady rhythm, but he couldn’t help but continually switch the pace and the angle of his thrusts, delighting in each new sound that each one made.

Eventually though, he apparently found just the right angle to strike, because Richie jerked like a live wire and let out a great strangled cry. Eddie worked that spot over and over again, until tears leaked from Richie’s eyes and his words turned into a continual, inarticulate slur of sound. Considering how close Eddie was he was pretty grateful really, but he was determined that he should be at least a tenth as good for Riche as Richie was for him, so when a larger hand shakily grabbed his own and guided it to the taller man’s cock, dripping with precum, he happily gripped it and pumped it in a desperate off-rhythm. Richie’s eyes, which had been screwed shut, flew open and stared straight back into Eddie’s before his mouth dropped open, a high-pitched moan echoed around the room, his whole body went taught and he shot all over his stomach and Eddie’s hand. Whatever nirvanas Eddie had previously visited, paled in comparison as he felt Richie clench and flex around him. Eddie thrust in deep one more, threw his head back in ecstasy, felt fire course through is body and emptied himself into the condom with a stuttered groan.

He collapsed forward onto Richie, who wrapped his wobbly arms around him, bringing him down from what must have been the strongest orgasm of his life, real-and-artificial-hands down. For several minutes they just stroked each other’s skin softly, murmuring gentle words to one another, and trying to catch their breath. Eddie’s muscles ached, his hair was plastered to his forehead and the most delightfully satisfied exhaustion sated his body.

After a while, he slipped out of Richie and propped himself up on one elbow to look down at him. “I know you’ve probably had a hell of a lot better, but…I thought that was pretty great” he said somewhat shyly, amazed that he was still blushing after everything they just did.

“Are you kidding? That was the best threesome anyone has ever had in all of human history,” Richie said.

“Um…threesome?”

“Yeah.” Richie said as if he was describing something obvious. “Eds, Chee and Bucky.”

Eddie giggled, and Richie grinned, and they lay down next to one another, and whispered to one another about nothing in particular, before falling asleep in one another’s arms.

When Eddie awoke the next morning, still wrapped around Richie he couldn’t help but stare at his sleeping face, mouth slightly open and breathing peaceful, heavy breaths. He looked old and young, beautiful and dorky, familiar and new all at once, and Eddie knew right there, more sure of anything that he had ever been, that no matter how crappy the first forty years of his life had been, the next forty would be anything but.

Having his arm torn off and eaten by a daemonic, shape-shifting murder clown?

Best thing that ever happened to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to tinarmedrex's em>Georgie has two daddies because:
> 
> A. It inspired a lot of Richie's feelings in this chapter  
> B. It is probably the best domestic Reddie fic out there
> 
>  
> 
> I may or may not (probably the latter) write something else after this. Thank you to everyone who read this, kudos it and commented.
> 
> As ever, comments, critiques and criticisms are thoroughly welcomed.

**Author's Note:**

> So I think like everyone else I've been wanting to write something post-Chapter 2 ever since the trailer dropped, and here it is.
> 
> I'm thinking it's going to be about four or so chapters, though we'll see. Updates may be sporadic as I'm a pretty fucking slow writer (the amount of people in this fandom who can get home from work/school/uni/life and still have the energy to create astounds me).
> 
> Again I'm afraid I haven't been able to work out how to get the other Losers in this, but know that they're out there (lets pretend Stan just fell asleep in the bath, woke up a week later super-pruney but otherwise Ok, and is now having lots of lovely sex with Mike)


End file.
